xlink:href="#n177" type="note">[177]. all right. Thanks for your offer of assistance – but I don’t see where your butting-in would help things any. It’s a kind of private affair, you know – but thanks all the same.”
Prince Michael sat at the young man’s side. He was often rebuffed but never offensively. His courteous manner and words forbade that.
“Clocks,” said the Prince, “are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of a bunco steerer[178], who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease to order your affairs by that insensate monitor of brass and steel.”
“I don’t usually,” said the young man. “I carry a watch except when I’ve got my radiant rags on.”
“I know human nature as I do the trees and grass,” said the Prince, with earnest dignity. “I am a master of philosophy, a graduate in art, and I hold the purse of a Fortunatus[179]. There are few mortal misfortunes that I cannot alleviate or overcome. I have read your countenance, and found in it honesty and nobility as well as distress. I beg of you to accept my advice or aid. Do not belie the intelligence I see in your face by judging from my appearance of my ability to defeat your troubles.”
The young man glanced at the clock again and frowned darkly. When his gaze strayed from the glowing horologue[180] of time it rested intently upon a four-story red brick house in the row of dwellings opposite to where he sat. The shades were drawn, and the lights in many rooms shone dimly through them.
“Ten minutes to nine!” exclaimed the young man, with an impatient gesture of despair. He turned his back upon the house and took a rapid step or two in a contrary direction.
“Remain!” commanded Prince Michael, in so potent a voice that the disturbed one wheeled around with a somewhat chagrined laugh.
“I’ll give her the ten minutes and then I’m off,” he muttered, and then aloud to the Prince: “I’ll join you in confounding all clocks, my friend, and throw in women, too.”
“Sit down,” said the Prince calmly. “I do not accept your addition. Women are the natural enemies of clocks, and, therefore, the allies of those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our follies and limit our pleasures. If you will so far confide in me I would ask you to relate to me your story.”
The young man threw himself upon the bench with a reckless laugh.
“Your Royal Highness, I will,” he said, in tones of mock deference. “Do you see yonder house – the one with three upper windows lighted? Well, at 6 o’clock I stood in that house with the young lady I am – that is, I was – engaged to. I had been doing wrong, my dear Prince – I had been a naughty boy, and she had heard of it. I wanted to be forgiven, of course – we are always wanting women to forgive us, aren’t we, Prince?”
“’I want time to think it over,’ said she. ’There is one thing certain; I will either fully forgive you, or I will never see your face again. There will be no half-way business. At half-past eight,’ she said, ’at exactly half-past eight you may be watching the middle upper window of the top floor. If I decide to forgive I will hang out of that window a white silk scarf. You will know by that that all is as was before, and you may come to me. If you see no scarf you may consider that everything between us is ended forever.’ That,” concluded the young man bitterly, “is why I have been watching that clock. The time for the signal to appear has passed twenty-three minutes ago. Do you wonder that I am a little disturbed, my Prince of Rags and Whiskers?”
“Let me repeat to you,” said Prince Michael, in his even, well-modulated tones, “that women are the natural enemies of clocks. Clocks are an evil, women a blessing. The signal may yet appear.”
“Never, on your principality!” exclaimed the young man, hopelessly. “You don’t know Marian – of course. She’s always on time, to the minute. That was the first thing about her that attracted me. I’ve got the mitten instead of the scarf. I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was cooked. I’ll go West on the 11.45 to-night with Jack Milburn. The jig’s up. I’ll try Jack’s ranch awhile and top off with the Klondike and whiskey. Good-night – er – er – Prince.”
Prince Michael smiled his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile and caught the coat sleeve of the other. The brilliant light in the Prince’s eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy translucence.
“Wait,” he said solemnly, “till the clock strikes. I have wealth and power and knowledge above most men, but when the clock strikes I am afraid. Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the word of the hereditary Prince of Valleluna. On the day of your marriage I will give you $100,000 and a palace on the Hudson. But there must be no clocks in that palace – they measure our follies and limit our pleasures. Do you agree to that?”
“Of course,” said the young man, cheerfully, “they’re a nuisance, anyway – always ticking and striking and getting you late for dinner.”
He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three minutes to nine.
“I think,” said Prince Michael, “that I will sleep a little. The day has been fatiguing.”
He stretched himself upon a bench with the manner of one who had slept thus before.
“You will find me in this park on any evening when the weather is suitable,” said the Prince, sleepily. “Come to me when your marriage day is set and I will give you a cheque for the money.”
“Thanks, Your Highness,” said the young man, seriously. “It doesn’t look as if I would need that palace on the Hudson, but I appreciate your offer, just the same.”
Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from the bench to the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the frowsy face and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more comfortable position. “Poor devil!” he said, as he drew the tattered clothes closer about the Prince’s breast.
Sonorous and startling came the stroke of 9 from the clock tower. The young man sighed again, turned his face for one last look at the house of his relinquished hopes – and cried aloud profane words of holy rapture.
From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving, snowy, fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised joy.
By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home-hurrying, unknowing of the delights of waving silken scarfs on the borders of dimly-lit parks.
“Will you oblige me with the time, sir?” asked the young man; and the citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and announced:
“Twenty-nine and a half minutes past eight, sir.”
And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made further oration.
“By George! that clock’s half an hour fast! First time in ten years I’ve known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies a —”
But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer, a fast receding black shadow, flying in the direction of a house with three lighted upper windows.
And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats they owned. The park was deserted save for one dilapidated figure that sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it.
“It’s Dopy Mike,” said one. “He hits the pipe every night. Park bum for twenty years. On his last legs, I guess.”
The other